Career Development: Your New Competitive Advantage!

When was the last time someone spoke with you about your career?
When was the last time you spoke with your people about their career?

In today's intensely competitive global workplace, finding the right talent is tough. Keeping them is tougher. If you are not talking with your people about their career, someone else probably is.

Of course, you have performance management discussions. Unfortunately, performance discussions are about the past. Career discussions are about the future, their future. Which discussions do you think they are more interested in?

Let's look at the 3 primary groups of employees:

Most at risk group: the top talent, usually the top 10% of your employees. These top performers are prime targets of headhunters and competitors. They are competent, mobile, marketable and they know it. If you don't show active interest in them, they simply move to where there is more interest. Imagine what that will do to your top line and bottom line.

Next at risk group: the majority 80% who are the backbone of the organisation. If you don't help them develop their careers, their mindset and competency could be in "mint condition", no different from the time you recruited them years ago. In this internet age, do you seriously expect them to compete, let alone beat the competition, with old technology and mindsets?

The hidden risk group: the bottom 10%. Imagine you let them be and they "retire mentally on the job". That is 10% of your organisation's payroll wasted on sub-zero productivity, plus the negative influence on the rest. How long do you think you can last as their boss?

What can you do?

Increase your Personal Career Acumen

Increase the Career Acumen of your people

Help them maximize their No. 1 Asset: their Careers

With career discussions, your may raise employee expectations. And it usually happens to 5% of the employees. But you will see improvement in morale, performance and profits in the other 95%. Isn't that what you are hired to do?